The Judge in Chains
Authoritarianism doesn’t announce itself. It tests what the people are willing to surrender.
In a nation that still calls itself free, we are now arresting judges.
In this flood of outrages, this deliberate deluge of abuses designed to exhaust our capacity for outrage, it becomes nearly impossible to keep pace. That's precisely the strategy. I'll leave the daily documentation to the journalists who track each new violation. Their work deserves your support, provided you can consume it without surrendering to despair.1
My aim here is to step back from the immediate crises and examine the structural damage being inflicted on our democracy, and what it reveals about our trajectory.
Democracy functions on a framework of institutions and principles designed to protect popular sovereignty, equality, and accountability. At its core stand two pillars: the rule of law and judicial independence.
The rule of law demands that no one, not even those who govern, stands above laws that apply equally to all citizens.
Judicial independence transforms this principle from aspiration to reality. It shields judges from political intimidation, allowing them to render judgment without fear or favor.
This isn't revolutionary thinking; it's foundational. Shakespeare's line about killing lawyers acknowledges a fundamental truth: to destroy a society, begin by destroying those who ensure rules apply universally.
This is precisely what unfolds before us now.
We imagine democracy's collapse would announce itself with unmistakable clarity—tanks in streets, martial declarations, an overnight transformation. History tells us otherwise.
Authoritarian regimes rarely begin with horror, but with ridicule. Hitler was dismissed as a clown by German elites deep into the 1930s. Chávez was seen as a buffoonish populist before consolidating power. Orbán was treated as merely an unserious nationalist. Even Erdoğan was once welcomed as a democratic reformer.
The end rarely feels like the end at its beginning. Initial moves don't shock the conscience but slip beneath its notice. Targets are strategically selected: not the respected, but the reviled; not the popular, but the feared. The government identifies a disfavored group or controversial figure and suggests: they are different, unworthy of your defense.
The goal isn't concealment but reframing: presenting injustice first as understandable, then as necessary. Injustice becomes palatable through isolation. An unpopular victim makes the first violation easier to accept. Once surrendered, principles become increasingly easy to abandon.
The arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan in Wisconsin isn't merely an isolated event but a test, a quiet question to the public: Can we get away with this?
If the answer is affirmative, it won't end here. It never does.
Kash Patel and Attorney General Bondi have revealed their intentions with striking clarity. In direct violation of DOJ and FBI protocols against discussing active investigations, both broadcast their message: Cross us, and we will find you. This isn't prosecution; it's intimidation—an administration making an example, not pursuing justice.
These initial arrests aren't designed to provoke mass resistance (though the accumulation of abuses will inevitably generate pushback). They're calculated to induce indifference—to create the impression that nothing fundamental has changed, that these are regrettable but isolated excesses. That these people don’t deserve constitutional protections. Every small surrender matters. Each erosion of judicial independence, each attack on rule of law, shifts the boundaries until no boundaries remain.
If the judiciary can be intimidated, packed, or broken, nothing else will stand.
Elections can be manipulated. Laws can be rewritten. Freedoms can be stripped away—not dramatically, but procedurally—through courts too compromised or frightened to resist.
This isn't alarmism but observation, history repeating itself with the flat vowels of the American dialect.
We face no hypothetical threat. The machinery is already in motion: loyalty purges, plans to dismantle civil service protections, open contempt for courts that rule "incorrectly," schemes to seize direct control of the Justice Department.
These aren't the actions of a healthy democracy preparing for another routine election. They are the maneuvers of a movement that views democracy as an obstacle.
The arrest of a judge may seem inconsequential today. It will not seem so tomorrow.
The only question remaining is whether we will recognize it for what it is, while we still retain the freedom to do something about it. I think often of Camus these days and am reminded of his words in Combat in August 1944 as the Allies retook Paris:
Paris is firing all its ammunition into the August night. Against a vast backdrop of water and stone, on both sides of a river awash with history, freedom’s barricades are once again being erected. Once again justice must be redeemed with men’s blood.
I hope we need not learn this again the hard way.
Some critical follows:
Anne Applebaum, both here on Substack and at the Atlantic
One First, from Steve Vladeck
Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer
Timothy Snyder
The Bulwark
Ken White and Josh Barro at Serious Trouble
Noah Smith, for more economic-related news
Heather Cox Richardson
Brian Beutler